


First Steps

by servantofclio



Series: Branwen Lavellan [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Pre-Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He might not be Dalish, but Branwen Lavellan has more in common with Solas than anyone else in Haven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Steps

As much as the landscape around Haven was beautiful—she could not help but be impressed by the snow-covered peaks visible on every side—Branwen Lavellan often wished she were somewhere else. Somewhere with forest and rain, somewhere the air did not sting her face, somewhere she could be surrounded by her own people, instead of shemlen.

They were nice enough, for shemlen, Branwen supposed. Well, _nice_ was not quite the right word for Cassandra, who was brusque and no-nonsense even when she was in a good mood. But no one in the camp had called her knife-ear, though, or anyway not to her face. Branwen got some odd looks when she was out and about in Haven, but she couldn’t tell whether that was because she was elvhen or because... well. Because of the mark that sometimes glowed bright enough to be seen through her glove, and sometimes, still, ached as though her bones were coming apart.

She spoke most often with the leaders of the camp, which still made her feel off balance. She might have the power that they needed, but that didn’t mean they had to care a bit what she thought. And yet they were faultlessly polite, all four of them, and kept asking her opinions on things. Cassandra even invited Branwen to meet with them in the Chantry for strategy sessions. Usually it was just Branwen and the four shemlen, although Varric always seemed to know what had been discussed there anyway, and would drop remarks about it into conversation when Branwen spoke to him outside. She could not quite make up her mind where he was getting his information from. Josephine, maybe, who was charming and liked to talk. Or no, maybe Cullen. He and Varric were both Kirkwallers, weren’t they? Hadn’t they been some sort of acquaintances? And Cullen didn’t seem a very duplicitous sort, so it might not be difficult for Varric to get him talking. Probably not Leliana, who seemed more than capable of keeping her own counsel. Branwen wasn’t sure yet what to make of the Inquisition’s spymaster. She had seen the woman lose her composure just once; the rest of the time her face was still and smooth, giving away nothing. Branwen went to the meetings and flexed her toes inside her unaccustomed boots, breathing in the smell of pine wood and beeswax, and pondered whether Varric’s source was Cullen or Josephine while she listened to the others debate. They listened, too, when she had something to say, a fact which surprised her every time it happened.

She got tired, though. Tired of craning her neck to look up all the shemlen who towered over her. There were only a handful of people in the camp who weren’t shems. It was so much easier to talk to them sometimes, even Minaeve, who mostly wanted to talk about the creatures she was studying.

Solas came to some of the meetings, too, at Cassandra’s invitation. For the most part, she asked there when they were talking over how the Breach worked, or about demons, or some other matter that needed a mage’s advice, since there was no other they could call on at present. Minaeve was too inexperienced, and her interests too specialized. Solas, in contrast, had a knowledge of matters arcane seemed vast indeed. It was far beyond anything Branwen had ever heard from her own Keeper. Wherever he had been in his travels, he had a theory about everything, and could summon up the most obscure details on request. She could have listened to him talk for much longer, though she only half understood most of what he said. Still, there seemed to be a pattern, an order to the Fade, to hear him tell it, something she could almost grasp if she put her mind to it.

She noticed, too, that he confined himself to answering questions put to him, and only rarely volunteered an opinion in those sessions—and only on matters pertaining to magic and the spirit realm. The rest of the time, he stayed quiet, fading into the background so well that everyone except Branwen herself seemed to forget he was there. Once she saw Cassandra openly start when the talk wheeled around to the Fade again, and he interjected a remark; and Cassandra was not a person who was easily caught off-guard.

Solas was very good at being unobtrusive, in short. It was a skill Branwen could appreciate, and she supposed that it must be most valuable for a traveling apostate to remain unnoticed. It was Branwen’s charge to notice things, though. She had not spent years as scout for her clan for nothing, and it was a chief reason the Keeper had sent her, rather than anyone else, to the Conclave.

So she noticed, and turned it over in her mind, together with the handful of other things she knew about him. He was firm in his views when he did venture an opinion. He had a different view of spirits from most. Most Chantry folk, anyway. Branwen knew her Keeper’s Second, though, and she was known to say similar about spirits, from time to time. He seemed capable enough in a fight, not that she had much means of judging how skilled a mage was. She seemed more sensitive to magic now, though; she could feel a twinge in her palm when he cast a spell, and when he gathered magic around her, it felt like the charged air before a storm blew in.

He wasn’t Dalish, he’d made that clear, but he was closer to being one of her own than anyone else in the camp was.

Maybe that was why, when Branwen emerged from the Chantry that day, her steps turned toward the cluster of cottages around the apothecary’s shop, where she knew Solas tended to linger.

She breathed in the cool thin mountain air to chase the scent of candles and incense away. It had been a long session that time. Cassandra and Leliana had argued, and Branwen had had precious little to add to their discussion of Chantry politics. She should have slipped out an hour ago, but she didn’t want to be further on either woman’s bad side than she already was, and they seemed to expect her to be there. It was a bright, crisp day, though, and the bright sky and white peaks were restful to her eyes after a day spent indoors by candlelight. She kept her eyes on the mountains as she walked, nodding to one or two people as she went, and tried not to notice the whispers that started up as soon as she passed.

She found Solas sitting cross-legged on the stoop of one of the cottages, bent over something. As she drew near, she could see that he was patching a shirt. She hesitated a moment before asking, “Might I join you?”

“Of course, Herald,” he said mildly.

There was plenty of room to sit down on the stoop. She took a perch that wasn’t too close, looking over the knots of buildings, smoking chimneys, and walls that made up Haven. From here, she could just hear the clash of weapons from the training ground below. She closed her marked left hand into a fist, and opened it again.

“You know I’m not—I still don’t think Andraste had much to do with it,” she said, opening and closing her marked left hand. “Branwen is just fine.”

“Branwen, then,” he said, and she caught a half-smile before he bent again over his work.

The stitches were small, neat and tidy, and she found herself watching his long fingers ply the needle. “That’s neatly done,” she said, for lack of anything better to say.

“I find, when one travels alone, one is well-advised to learn to care for one’s gear,” Solas said.

Branwen laughed a little. “True enough. In my clan, we all pitch in a little. My mother works in leather, but she’s always detested mending, so she had me do it as soon as I could manage the needle.”

“Mm. I find it soothing. We cannot fix that—yet—” He tilted his head toward the twisting glow in the sky that was the Breach— “but I can set this to rights, at least.”

Branwen nodded, understanding, and they settled into silence. She took a deep breath and let it out, and did it again. With each breath, she felt as though she was cleaning Chantry air and politics out of her lungs, and out of her head.

Her fingers itched, though. Even in this secluded area, she could see and hear people going about their business in the camp, and here she was with no real work to be done. She looked up at the swirling green amid the otherwise serene blue sky, and stole another look at her companion’s hands and face.

He wasn’t exactly handsome, perhaps, but he had an interesting face: elegant, angular bones softened by the splash of freckles, the fine lines around his eyes, the hint of a dimple in his chin. When his eyes darted sideways and caught hers, she realized she’d come a little too close to staring and looked away, her cheeks warming a little. “Do you have anything else that needs work?” she asked, to cover herself.

Solas chuckled. “Nothing I can’t manage. I’m sure you have other things to do.”

“Not much until we leave for the Hinterlands,” she said, rubbing her palms against her thighs. Her left hand ached. At least it was in a dull kind of way, instead of the sharper burning it had been when she first woke up. She sighed. “I hate being idle.”

“So you’re saying I’d be doing you a favor by letting you mend my shirt?”

She met his eyes then and had to smile back, a little sheepishly. There was too much amusement dancing in his gray eyes to resist. “I suppose I am.”

“Well—” He knotted off his thread. “—then I must regret to say that I’ve finished this, and the rest of my things are in good repair.”

She was actually a trifle disappointed, Branwen realized. She really had been spending too much time in pointless council.

“However,” Solas continued, “I hear there’s music in the tavern these days, so you might find better diversion there.”

“I said I didn’t like being idle,” she pointed out.

“Think of it as a chance to see the people, then.” He bit off the thread and folded up the shirt, tucking the needle and thread into a small roll of felt. “And for them to see you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “They see me plenty.”

“They see the Herald.” Solas put his tools back into his belt pouch and rose. “You could let them see Branwen, if you like.”

She looked up, startled, at his offered hand and slowly put hers in it, allowing him to tug her to her feet.

“Shall we?” he inquired, and only then did Branwen realize that he intended for them both to go. The thought was obscurely warming.

“I didn’t realize you went to taverns,” she said.

“On occasion.” He let go of her hand, smiling.

The smile warmed his eyes and lightened his long face, usually so serious, and she could do nothing but smile back. “Let’s go, then.”


End file.
